


Three Bags Full

by tnico



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Basically, Gen, Kaer Morhen, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Winter At Kaer Morhen, all those baby witcher warnings, it's gonna be a platonic geralt n lambert fic but with daemons, very daemon focused
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24986089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnico/pseuds/tnico
Summary: Geralt doesn't recognize the daemon as Lambert's at first. Or, indeed, what kind of animal it was at all.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Lambert
Comments: 138
Kudos: 226





	1. First

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [one for sorrow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22763590) by [Emamel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel). 



> płotka name and species was inspired by[emamel's AU](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636618). other than that, no relation at all!
> 
> i also pulled lambert stubborning his way into getting his own room and the term 'grassed' from [raised by wolves and voices by ruffboi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24532948/chapters/59234935) (great fic! go read!) because i liked 'em so much! i have... no idea of the etiquette there, though? it doesn't seem like enough to count for a related work on its own, so uh. hopefully the shout-out's enough! please tell me if it isn't, i am a fandom recluse, i have no clue what i am doing here at any given time

Geralt and Płotka were first into Kaer Morhen that year. A long contract in Kaedwen had resolved itself just at the cusp of first frost, and they'd decided between the two of them to simply continue on and arrive earlier than usual.

They'd spent the bulk of the trip debating over whether they'd be the first back to winter or not. There wasn't much reward for it: more to be done with less bodies around to do. Still, Geralt didn't particularly mind. His brothers would join him soon enough. Płotka took it further; she seemed to enjoy the idea of being the first pair through the gate.

Geralt had watched over his breakfast in quiet amusement as Płotka fussed. She was always fastidious in her morning grooming, but she'd been markedly particular on this one, sun-up since arranging and rearranging her fur where it laid. He suspected it has something to do with the framing of her spots. "Expecting a fine reception?" he had asked.

"As there may be, if we're truly the first," Płotka had answered primly, in-between ducking down and smoothing her thick paws over her face. "The first witcher back from the Path always draws the newest of the younglings and unfledged who've yet to see a working witcher. If we're to be made examples, I'd rather we be good ones."

Geralt had huffed a laugh and shaken his head. Of course it'd be about the children. Winter was Płotka's time to descend on the brood of unsettled daemons, kept close by their nature to their human boys. She tended to young daemons during the winters like he supposes a gardener might attempt to grow and shape a well-formed hedge; appropriate examples to model seemed to feature regularly. "Eskel told me they've taken to calling you 'The Governess'."

"And Ruvsa might also mention the sorts of things they call _her_ , if she feels so conversational," Płotka had replied.

* * *

The instructors had realized ages before Geralt's own time that it was a fool's errand to try keeping the newest boys' attention the first day a _real_ witcher came back from the Path. No amount of pointing out most of their instructors were also definitely real witchers had ever managed to dampen the mystique of it. Once this year's crop of foundlings and orphans were lost to it, even the Kaer-grown boys got caught up, touting their levels of familiarity to their awed peers.

The instructors were long-past attempting to fight it, simply letting the cohort off at first call of a witcher arriving. It always ended predictably. At the start, the youngest boys fit to train gathered at the battlements in nervous excitement. They'd ratchet each other up with swapped rumors from the higher cohorts and the occasional lurid wive's tale picked from one homeland or another. Then one of the boys would finally spot the witcher coming into the human range of vision, and the focus would turn to competition.

The Kaer-grown younglings would work as a united front to push the other boys out of the best sightlines, demanding their seniority, but it was a flimsy alliance, invariably broken once they started arguing amongst themselves who exactly the arriving witcher was and trying to get the best look at their daemon and mount.

By the time Geralt can hear the high-pitched chatter, squawks and squeaks of children and their ever-shifting daemons debating who he might be, they're already fairly well decided on his identity and are now onto the stage that's trading whichever particular outrageous lie they'd heard about Geralt's own time at Kaer Morhen. Seems like they figured it out quicker than they tended to when he was a boy. The odds were stacked, he supposed, by the distinctiveness at distance of his white hair and Płotka's dappled fur.

"That why you spend so long preening this morning?" Geralt asked, as one of the children concluded an explanation to the others as to why his hair went white that's honestly news to him.

"I wouldn't wish to be mistaken," Płotka answered from further ahead, where she picked along the trail to avoid his mount's kicked dust.

The Kaer-grown boys start hushing them all at about the time the average witcher would wend into audible range, rather than a human's. Canny of them, but flawed: he's no average witcher. Płotka dropped back beside him as he rode, head raised and steps soft and silent.

Rows of wide, still-human eyes greeted his entrance in silence, zig-zagged by their still-animal-eyed daemons of much more varying heights. Geralt had honestly forgotten the sheer span and variety the eye's iris could come in. Not a lot of humans met his eyes, and fewer let their daemon do the same.

There were always new boys he didn't yet recognize, but it was usually easy to pick out the year's foundlings as the ones that looked most apprehensive, arrested by a combination of both tentative worship and a healthy dosing of fear. Płotka gets her own share of shying glances. They may have been acclimated to the instinctual wrongness of distance and matching pupils of a witcher's daemon, but a snow leopard's exotic enough he doubts they've ever seen one, in soul or the wild.

As he eyed their held-breath regard, he had the sudden urge to just stick his tongue out at the lot of them and _really_ throw them for a loop.

"Geralt," Płotka warned, low and under her breath, and he couldn't help but huff a quiet laugh that has some of the boys tensed on the sight of it. She always had a way with her hunches. "I won't," he assured her as he brought his horse to a stop to dismount and greet his brothers.

It was as the keeper of the younglings was finally rounding them up to now be dispersed back to their duties that he first noticed the daemon. He didn't usually tend to pay much mind to unsettled daemons, given their form's general impermanence, but this one caught his eye.

Geralt hadn't considered his familiarity with the various kinds of iron-blade beasts throughout the continent a point of personal pride before. He might have to rethink that, because not being able to pin this one on sight bothered him more than he expected. She was a little creature, dark-eyed and mostly brown. Her gait wasn't like any dog's, and though the thick lay of the fur and stubby ears gave the impression of a miniature bear cub, no bear had a proper tail or a tapered head. Too stocky for a marten, but too tall for a badger.

He fell into the old patterns of coming across an unknown species. It was a clinical process. Each unique feature observed, sorted, and committed to memory for cross-referencing later. Exotic forms for daemons came few and far between; Geralt and Płotka should know.

He didn't realize he was staring until the little creature snapped its head around and snarled at him in open threat. Geralt felt his eyebrows rise, but didn't look away. After a long moment, the child that must be her boy, slight and dark-eyed, nudged her along back to movement to keep pace with the other younglings. Geralt added a respectably-sharp pair of fangs to his list of observations.

* * *

Geralt kept seeing the form about the keep long after he'd cross-referenced out what the little creature was. A wolverine: not so much a very small bear as a very large weasel. He also picked out she had to be Lambert's, from how very often he saw the two of them together. Not that they had a choice, undistanced as they were, but the form was unique enough from the usual breeds unsettled daemons tended towards to catch his eye every time he saw it.

Often enough it didn't take long for Geralt to notice the boy was an early settler.

He didn't know much about Lambert. He couldn't be one of the foundlings, not at that age. Dropped off, maybe. Could be a child surprise. It seemed like they'd been picking up more and more of them every winter.

He confirmed the suspicion with Płotka that evening, when she drifted back to him after a day of herding children and daemons both.

They hadn't had much to talk about since they'd arrived. Some witchers and their other halves took winter as a time to re-establish the proximity they'd had before their distancing. That was Eskel's preference. As soon as he was through the gate he and Ruvsa glued themselves together as close as they'd ever been. When they could; it had become at times a challenge, given the size she'd settled at.

Geralt and Płotka were the opposite in their winters, at least at the start. After three seasons of mostly each other for the company, it helped to have a bit of space to breathe.

Płotka went off to the children's halls to drill the fear of disappointing her into the Keep's newest occupants. Straightening out of the unruly was fertile ground for things she could pick over that weren't just Geralt's personal problems. Geralt worked through the annual build-up of tasks best done by someone pulling the full weight of the mutagens. The list involved much more mundane tedium than the premise might suggest, but he found the clear directive and monotony of it meditative, settling him after the shifting ways of the Path.

The work needed to be done, and was involving enough for the both of them that by time the keep was snowed-in they fell back together without issue for the usual winter duties with the Grassed boys and their distanced daemons. They met when their tasks were done to spend the evening together, though it was mostly spent in comfortable silence. Geralt waited until she'd settled herself by the hearth before he first brought up Lambert and his odd little daemon, who Płotka called Mal.

"What's it short for?" Geralt asked.

Płotka sighed, bringing her head down to rest her chin on her crossed paws. "I wouldn't trust anything they answered. They have yet to even tell anyone if they're a he or a she, and it's caused no end of problems."

Geralt raised an eyebrow. Cross-gender daemons were rare and distinguishing enough among the population to be subject to the fickle whims of local superstition, but there were more of them among witchers than anywhere else. Abandonment was considered one of the less messy solutions in some places. "Someone got an issue with male daemons? Surprised you haven't handled it already."

"I'd almost wish it were as simple as that," Płotka mused, slitted witcher's eyes lidding as she settled into the warmth of her position. "I couldn't even tell you if they _are_ a boy, or just a girl and stubborn about it. They refuse to say one way or the other and won't hear a word of reason about it."

Geralt moved to the chair next to her and sat. "Doesn't seem like much to cause a problem over."

"It shouldn't be, but refusing to answer at all is the crux. No child stands well for a secret they know is being kept from them, whatever it might be. Though," she sighed again, well-wearied, "I can say it wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if the pair didn't exacerbate it so."

"They get touchy?"

"The two of them dare the questioner to try and find out. Touch would be preferable to punch, claw, and bite."

Geralt bit down on a smile. From what little there was written on the behavior of the average wolverine, he can't say he's surprised. "And how'd the strategy play out with his instructors?"

"Lambert, at least, is smarter than to try. Unfortunately, he's also smart enough none of them have figured a way around the insistent accusations they've an uncouth obsession with animal genitals when they try to address it."

At that, Geralt snorted a laugh. He called up the faces of the witchers heading that cohort. "Bet that went well with Varin."

"Oh, _Varin._ He and Idelya only made it worse before I stepped in. I should hardly be surprised." Eyes fixed in their sockets aren't good to roll, so Płotka had cultivated a certain roll of her shoulders to express an equivalent sentiment after their Trial. "They tried to force the matter, which of course only crystalized his opposition. And they were _there_ for the debacle over the dormitory, there's really no excuse."

Geralt settled back in his chair and reached for the fire poker. "Sounds like a busy kid. Debacle?"

"There's no other word for it. He and Mal took incredible offense to the door to the dormitory being locked when first they came here. They made such a nuisance of themselves in the first week that it was either giving them one of the spare rooms or tossing the pair of them off the battlements."

"Thought locks in the first week was standard practice."

"It still is. But once Lambert and Mal have decided it's a matter of principle, there's no budging them. It's a recurrent problem."

"Mm. Got the sense."

"Oh, you have no _idea,_ Geralt." Płotka had oozed to her side in the liquid manner cats do, back to the fire. Geralt reached down and rubbed his fingers over the ridge of her head to show his sympathy, and she raised her head into it gratefully. "It makes the usual discipline almost impossible. Take anything they enjoy away from them and it only makes them angrier that you'd 'use it against them'. And then they reject whatever _was_ used wholly as some resent-laden attempt at revenge, so it can't even be used more than once."

"So he's a tough one." Geralt moved his fingers to the center of her brow, and Płotka closed her eyes, the start of a purr rumbling in her chest. He kept up the smooth stroke as he weighed how he'd approach the matter of discussion.

"I noticed Mal's already settled." No real need to be coy about it.

Płotka made a noise of assent rather than move her head to nod and disrupt his hands. "Since before they came," she added.

"You think," Geralt paused, picking his words. "Might have something to do with why Mal won't answer."

"It might," Płotka agreed with a melancholy note. "I'm told he has nightmares."

They lapsed into silence. Geralt kept a steady stroke as he thought.

Early settlers were a bit like cross-genders. Rare enough to be noteworthy, outside of wartime, but witchers ended up with more than most. It wasn't always an indication that something harmful had happened, but Geralt's more than aware that it meant exactly that far more often than many communities that considered themselves respectable would admit.

It's a reason to keep an eye on Lambert, anyway. In Geralt's time as a witcher, there've been three boys the instructors had to cull after passing their Grasses, proven to be too dangerous to others to be allowed on the Path. Two of them had been early settlers.

Geralt knows the reasons for it, but it still felt like they'd failed those boys, in some vital way. He knew Płotka felt that way too; she could be as merciless to herself as she could be to him.

"If there's something I can do--" Geralt trailed the offer off.

"Thank you, but I've it handled for now," Płotka deferred neatly. She flicked one amber eye open, tilting her head to catch him in her vision. He got the sense she approved of his interest. "Or shall, when I finally get it through Idelya's head that she can't barge her way through every problem she comes across."

"Now that I can't help you with. Been trying with Varin for years." Geralt said dryly, and Płotka laughed.

* * *

The next morning, enough Wolves had arrived for the instructors to start arranging the winter's duty rosters. Vesemir and Salka invite Geralt and Płotka to help him piece together his part of it, though Geralt and the old grey wolf are mostly accessory while Vesemir and Płotka lean their heads together over calendars and lists to discuss them with quiet fervor.

When the topic of conversation turns to who'll be running the bed checks this year, Lambert and Mal come up again.

"It'd be a bit much to ask his cohort's minder to trek half the keep over to the Grassed boys every night, I'd think," Płotka considered, her fluffy tail lashing in a slow rhythm.

"And there's the different lights-out for the cohort he's bunking nearest. That boy. Still a thorn in my side when he's not even trying," Vesemir sighed, rubbing at his forehead. Salka rubs her head against his knee, huffing in commiseration.

Geralt thought back to the three boys culled. He hadn't been part of the decision; hadn't known any of them well.

"Near enough to our room," he offered. Płotka raised her head to meet his eyes. He met them, then raised his chin up in a silent question. She considered, then nodded.

Płotka turned to Vesemir. "Geralt and I will handle Mal and Lambert," she said, and that settled it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Daemon Profile (short cut)
> 
> Płotka, the [snow leopard](https://www.google.com/search?q=snow+leopard&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLufLYz9zrAhXxGDQIHZOoBooQ_AUoAXoECCQQAw&biw=1536&bih=754). 
> 
> the animal
> 
> Snow leopards are on the fairly small end of the scale when we're talking big cat, but they have a particularly skilled manner of hunting, much like the mountain lion. Instead of getting very, very close and then lunging, like the big cats with the weight to back it up, snow leopards rely very much on speed, skill navigating their environment, and momentum to get their prey. As one would expect, when their prime method of hunting is 'sneak up to the high grounds and then _run yourself full tilt straight down that mountain at that sucker, comin' atcha,_ SUP _'_
> 
> the name
> 
> Płotka's name is the same as Geralt's horse in the original Polish. It actually translates to roach as in the fish, not the insect, plus a diminutive. As per my original inspiration, [Emamel's au](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636618), Geralt was the one who picked her name from the childhood habit of turning into a fish and refusing to turn back during arguments when they were still tethered. Roach is just fine in this AU, worry not; it's just that I feel that with a daemon Geralt would not be so co-dependent on his horse.  
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> ***
> 
> i am not used to writing in a consistent past tense and kept slipping while writing, so if you spot one that got by me feel free to say! they're tricksy.


	2. Second

That night, around the time the younger cohort would have their headcount, Geralt and Płotka went to the small room Lambert had reputedly tantrumed his way into. Geralt couldn't say the boy really got preferential treatment for his behavior; he and his daemon had been functionally stored away in a closet. Though contentedly so, Płotka reported. Only a closet all to his and Mal's own with the promise of no locks on the door had been enough to quell the tantruming and allow them all some sleep.

It was an uneventful sort of chore. Płotka padded silently beside him down a dark hallway, he cracked the door, they identified the two dark, quietly breathing lumps on the cot as boy and daemon, he shut the door, and they went back to their own room to sleep.

They followed that pattern for the rest of the week. Płotka came with him every time, though she didn't need to. He knew she accompanied him for the same reason he kept his senses towards Lambert's room during his own late nights, wary for the telltale sounds of a nightmare. They couldn't do much, but at least during the winter, they could be there.

The next week is heralded by the true start of winter training for the new apprentices. It was time for the cohorts nearing their Trials to take their first run at the Killer, the precarious mountain path around Kaer Morhen, before it really started icing up.

They start the boys off on the mountain's trail still human-bodied and daemon-tethered as a matter of course. It's dangerous, but there's reason for it. The variety in the terrain puts strain on the bodies and constraints on the soul's form, forcing them to learn each other and winnowing out each pair's strengths before the true test of their Trials.

The physical conditioning won't help a boy survive the Grasses, but it can quicken the recovery of those who do. No tutelage guarantees the form of the daemon's Choice, but it can be influenced by familiarity with the sort of hardy, lethal forms that best suit a witcher's daemon.

A witcher's daemon is to be their will, their second self, their most valued tool; Geralt had already heard just about every variation on the speech Varin is giving to his cohort back when he and Płotka were still tethered tight together, so he hadn't planned to show up for this year's repeat. Those plans had been changed when Płotka politely but firmly informed him that he would, in fact, be waking up early that morning to see her off on the trail.

For all that the Killer was about pushing the pups to their limits, there was little point to pushing them off cliffs. They were simply too young and too human to leave unsupervised on the potentially fatal mountain course, so the instructors made use of the winter months to get the boys acclimated to it when there were daemons and witchers both who had the time to patrol the route during the runs and intervene if necessary.

"You don't usually go for that," Geralt had observed, after he was told the night previous. When Płotka volunteered for something, it tended to be because she thought it would improve under her clear and specific direction, rather than at a distance.

"It will be Mal's first run," Płotka had replied. Geralt could see her point. One of the reasons they could run the boys through the Killer that young is because their daemons were unsettled, allowing them to apply direct fixes over the gaps in their abilities. Boys like Lambert, whose daemons can't change to compensate, tend to have difficulties at the start. And from all Geralt's heard, Lambert is nothing if not a difficult child already.

"They'll get the advantage after their Trials," Geralt noted. "The familiarity evens it out."

"Yes, Geralt, _w_ _e_ know that, but children aren't known for their nuanced understanding of delayed benefit," Płotka reminded him dryly. She'd had a point, so Geralt had stayed for the start of it too.

* * *

Varin's threatening nothing they hadn't all heard before, but Geralt could still almost taste the nerves in the air. The boys and daemons were glancing around and shifting foot-to-foot, all jittery with apprehension, excitement, and anxiety in varying combinations.

Lambert drew Geralt's eye immediately. In direct defiance to the agitation surrounding him, Lambert was firmly planted, arms crossed and face set into glower. The deep brown of his eyes looked near-black in the diffuse light of the early morning and gave the glower he's set towards his instructor a level of dead-eyed intensity that was disquieting to see from a child that young.

Geralt couldn't see Mal through the small crowd, but he _could_ see the ring of intentional distance the other boys in Lambert's cohort have given him bulged out distinctly to his left. It gave him a fair idea of where the little creature was.

The speech concluded and Varin started herding the boys to the trailhead. Literally, in Idelya's case: she favored using the heft of her head to simply push the daemons of her cohort into the speed she desired of them more often than not. When she was in range to Mal, the daemon whirled completely and snapped something towards the massive boar, an echo of when they'd first caught Geralt's eye.

Too much excitable chatter from the milling group to distinguish what was said, though the tone's vicious. Płotka was right: there really was no pinning the voice. It hovered in the middle-ground that some children occupy, fluting and dropping to the staccato bursts of Mal's words. Whatever it was, Idelya didn't seem to rise to it, but when she pushed Mal back into motion again it was with more force than likely necessary for a daemon so small.

Płotka padded silently on to bring up their rear with the others who'd been assigned to patrol. Geralt doesn't bother wishing her luck; they've never been the sort of paired soul who needed to agree on everything, but when it came to leaving things to chance they've always been united.

* * *

Lambert and Mal came in last by a sizeable margin, and were sent off to do the extra kitchen duties that came with it.

That evening, Płotka was brooding.

"I am not brooding," she denied, severe, as she rounded off the turn in the back-and-forth path she was wearing into the floor of their room. Geralt raised his eyebrows, which made her huff irritably, but didn't push the point beyond that.

"Mal's already settled," he said instead, because it was easy enough to guess what was itching at her. Płotka only brooded like this when it involved one of her winter's broodlings. "It's not unexpected."

Płotka whapped him admonishingly with the feather duster-tip of her tail as she passed. "There's _something_ , Geralt. It was odd."

"He's an odd kid," Geralt reminded her. "That's been pretty clear."

"The suspicious kind of odd," she corrected tartly. "I followed the pair the entire length of the run. From the very start, they weren't struggling, they were-- stalling."

If it's driven her to pacing, chances are there had been something up. She's got an unparalleled sense for artifice afoot. Unfortunately, knowing something is _up_ doesn't help much in narrowing it _down_.

"For what? He usually so keen on kitchen duty?" Geralt asked, keeping his tone mild. At times it helped to remind her that not every deception and untruth she came across was a matter of high stakes to solve.

"If only. They'd be distinctly easier to handle if either of them were food-motivated," Płotka grumbled.

"Thought that was for training dogs," Geralt said, pushing down a smile.

"Well, I've yet to discover a method of discipline that doesn't drive them to worse. I'm considering branching out," she concluded waspishly as she pivoted one final turn and leapt up to his bed.

Geralt handed over the overstuffed rag-pillow she preferred for kneading and helped her fuss it into position. "Catch anything in the chatter?" he asked. It's a given Płotka was listening in; she's far nosier than she'll ever willingly admit to.

"Nothing substantial. They'd stop at places, and they acted as if they were looking for something, but all they were _looking_ at was the mountain," Płotka reported. She's already started up at the pillow, the rapid pace of her paws belying the calm in her tone. "It just can't be only about capability, Geralt. Mal already has an astounding endurance for challenge, given their size. Are there many wolverines on mountains?"

Geralt cast back to what he'd read about wolverines within their environment. Like with their behavior, there hadn't been much. Generally, if someone got into range to properly observe one, the observation ended at the animal's aggression being noted to extend to anyone who gets into range. "Couldn't say. They keep broad territories."

"It can't be capability," Płotka repeated firmly, flexing her claws to a fretful rhythm. "If nothing else, they're simply too stubborn to stand for it."

Geralt leaned back against the headboard. "Suppose it's harder to pick a fight with a mountain," he mused.

* * *

Płotka wasn't any more resolved on her suspicions by the time the late hour arrived. Regardless, they went down the hallway to Lambert and Mal's room, cracked the door, and looked inside as usual.

Lambert was asleep, huddled under the blankets in the tight wedge he tended towards whenever he dropped off. At the foot of the bed, Mal was a dark shape curled by his feet.

Something was glittering in the dark.

Geralt noticed it when Płotka did. Mal's head was up and their eyes were open. The daemon stared at the two of them in silence.

Of all the things that unsettled humans about witchers and their daemons, Geralt knew the way they all shared the same kind of unnatural eyes was a core one. He himself was long used to seeing doubled pairs of slitted pupils.

It had still struck him when he'd first seen Mal and Lambert, how closely the near-black of their irises had matched already. The insolently blank look they'd both use when being scolded came off as all the more stronger for the featurelessness of it and thus seemed just about right for them; Geralt had thought it was almost a pity they'd both soon be losing it. For the daemon, those dark and deep-set pupils have become little black pits in the low light, even with Geralt's enhanced vision.

Geralt and Płotka exchanged glances. Lambert was asleep. Geralt had patrolled the boy's hall enough times that no human could disguise the change in their breathing from him, and if the human slept, it was a given the daemon slept too.

While Geralt was weighing his approach, Płotka resolved the matter for him, her voice kept soft. "You're awake."

Mal inclined their head slightly. "I don't sleep anymore," is all they had to say in reply, low but matter-of-fact.

Early settler, Geralt thought again. When it occurs that young, irregularities in development are known to happen. Wouldn't be the most abnormal habits Geralt's seen from one of them.

"You were following us on the Killer," Mal said to Płotka, tense and accusatory. Lambert doesn't stir, the low volume his daemon had set apparently effective enough.

"Yes," Płotka says evenly. She sat, bringing her front paws together neatly. "As it happens, that was my duty today."

" _No bullshit_ ," Mal hissed in reply immediately. "The _whole time_. _You_ were following _us_."

Geralt leaned back on his heels, keeping quiet. Some daemons were cagey about talking to those beyond their kind, especially ones brought in from outside the walls. Better to wait on Płotka's cues.

"Yes," Płotka repeated just as placidly as her tail started up a slow swing. "As it happens, you were last."

Mal's sharp teeth snap shut with a muted click, and they flash a silent snarl in displeasure that gleams in the light from the hallway.

After the pause, Mal's reply came rattled out all at once like a string of drummer's tattoo, harsh-sounding even so hushed. "Just 'cuz you got to keep coming in here don't make for some sort of _deep_ and _meaningful_ connection, fishbreath. You think we're trouble? You and your creepy witcher don't stop _watching_ us, you'll _see_ some fucking trouble."

Płotka pressed her eyes shut and sighed. Geralt raised an eyebrow. The change in expression caught Mal's attention, and the snarl is turned onto him.

"Yeah, you think I haven't seen you staring, slackjaw? You got something to say, you say it."

That was his cue, Geralt supposed. He and Płotka exchanged a glance. He had the feeling if he tried to insert himself into Płotka's delicate machinations over Mal's numerous minefields he'd end up stumbling over something vital and blowing the whole thing. Better to just throw wide and avoid it altogether.

"What's Mal short for?"

The wolverine paused, stopped short. Płotka kept her expression serene. _"What?"_ Mal asked.

Geralt shrugged. "Been curious."

Mal slowly rotated their head, eyeing Geralt incredulously, and then Płotka in open question. "He _has_ been curious," Płotka confirmed, and Geralt doubted Mal would be able to hear the drollness behind her mask of solemnity.

Mal is quiet for a long moment, the sort of active silence of a mind whirring away. "Malignancy," they said eventually, and then curled their lips in what appeared to be a parody of a grin. The unnatural contortion of expression and dark holes for eyes leaves the whole effect impressively ghoulish. "I also go by Nancy."

"Unique," Geralt said.

"Ain't we just," Mal cooed mockingly, dropping the pulled face and following up with another rapidfire whisper, fervent and fierce and this time with all the venom directed at Geralt. "And you won't make us change. You won't, not ever. Lambert would rather _die_."

Geralt had the feeling Mal wasn't talking about just the Trials. He considered his next reply.

"...And you?" Geralt finally asked.

Mal's teeth flashed bright in the dark as they're bared. Paired with the acidic amusement in their voice, it gave the impression of an actually genuine grin.

"Oh, no. Me, I'd rather kill."

* * *

After Geralt and Płotka were back in Geralt's room, they sat on the bed in a considering silence for a spate. Eventually, they turned and caught each other's eye, meaning it was time to talk about it.

"Early settler," Geralt commented, to start them off. "Probably what's behind the sleeping thing."

"Mm," was all Płotka had to say in response, staring forward, so Geralt let the silence carry until she was ready.

"I think I should do the bed check alone from now on," she said consideringly.

"Hey, I didn't do _that_ bad," Geralt defended with a dry humor. No reason to take offense. He could guess at where she's coming from.

"That was perhaps the first time I felt I was actually being listened to," Płotka confirmed. "It's not agreement, but it's the furthest I've gotten."

"And I'd be the enemy in the room," Geralt elaborated. Płotka nodded.

"You'll be listening in, of course," she continued with certainty. "I'll want your perspective after."

Geralt hummed, deliberating. It'd be far from the first conversation Geralt had eavesdropped on from the much-more-convenient range of witcher-distance, but listening to the talk between two _daemons_ , one still a human's, seemed… "Bit invasive."

Płotka rolled her shoulders, imperious in her dismissal. "Geralt, Mal is a _child_. These are hardly your peers you'll be intruding on; keeping watchful eye is our duty."

It's a fair point. Geralt hummed again in agreement. "And maybe you'll even be able to figure out what they're up to," he said, leaning back into his bed.

"For all our sakes," Płotka replied darkly, settling in next to him. " 'Else we'll certainly find out."

* * *

It's only days later, when Geralt tried using the name Mal had given him and Lambert had kicked him in the shin with needle-point accuracy and a piercing demand Geralt never again call his daemon a nancy, that Geralt realized that just because Geralt and Płotka had spoken to each other about that late-night conversation didn't mean that Mal and _Lambert_ did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> Daemon Profile (short cut)  
> Mal, the [wolverine](https://www.google.com/search?q=wolverine+animal&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwie1aPm7dzrAhWcAjQIHe73CNwQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=wolverine+animal&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIHCAAQsQMQQzIFCAAQsQMyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADoECAAQQ1CIB1iBDGCIDmgAcAB4AIABUIgB2AOSAQE3mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=rTNZX97KGZyF0PEP7u-j4A0&bih=754&biw=1536&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS832US832).
> 
> the animal
> 
> I went into more detail on why I chose a wolverine in particular [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24579724/chapters/60074539), but I'll add to that: if you want a sense of what terror Mal might wreak post-mutagens, may I direct you to the real story of the legendary [M3](https://web.archive.org/web/20130227121604/https://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=29178) and then remind you _and this one was made au naturel_.  
> 
> 
> the name
> 
> What's Mal's name short for? In the daemon's own words, "wouldn't _you_ like to know!!"  
> 


	3. Third, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i was reminded that one hardass witcher ghost from the bastion actually had a canonical name, so i pulled a little switcheroo.
> 
> i've got 6 self-contained chapters total in mind for this, but i find full-on geralt observational pov a lot less… i wouldn't say it's not as fun, but it's definitely not as energizing. so! i figured the good ol' smaller-chunks-more-often will help me get some momentum back.

In spite of Płotka's foreboding, her now-solo nightly check-ins turned out to be as uneventful as the ones before Lambert and Mal's first run on the Killer.

Pointedly uneventful, in fact; directly opposed to the night's revelations. Mal made it entirely clear they had no intention of speaking to Płotka any further, resolutely ignoring her hushed overtures to conversation. When it reached the point where Mal's obnoxiously faked snoring noises were enough to make Lambert stir, Płotka had to give it up altogether.

"Be patient," Geralt counseled. Płotka's been kneading her pillow with a vengeance, belying the unaffected coolness she's put on for the nightly post-check discussion. "They clearly have no problem voicing their issues when there is one."

"When _aren't_ they taking issue," Płotka huffed, digging her nails in deep and flexing. The pillow's been taking a real beating as of late. The case will be due for replacing sooner than usual.

"Exactly," Geralt agreed, "So be patient. It'll happen soon enough. They'll talk to you again when they have something to say."

* * *

It came to a head a few days later. In a way, Geralt had been right: whenever Lambert and Mal committed themselves to being difficult, they always ended up making it a statement.

It was time for the apprentices' second run through the Killer. Płotka had volunteered to be one of the chaperones again. Geralt had added himself onto the roster for the run as well without comment.

Varin prowled among the ranks of the cohort, prodding the slower boys into their carefully staggered starting points while Idelya did similarly with their daemons. With the looming unknown no longer the largest threat on the trail that lay ahead of them, the group was much more settled. Nerves were still high, but lit up with anticipation, eager for a chance to apply what they'd learned from the first go.

Of all of them, none seemed more eager for it than Mal and Lambert. The pair even put on a downright scamper to get to their starting positions as soon as they were directed, with not even a grumble or scowl from either.

They were fairly bouncing off each other with impatient energy after they got there. While Lambert limbered up, Mal perched themself atop his shoulders like a stole, clambering onto his back when the positioning called for it. It was an unwieldy, scrambling process, and took advantage of the thick winter clothes Lambert was wearing in ways he's no doubt already had to mend over previous. Yet the fact the creature was staying mounted on their boy throughout the motions of his vigorous movements at all made an impressive display of balance; moreso because Mal kept it while also keeping a constant pace with the criticisms, jokes, and jibes the two parried between them.

The trail of topics bantered back and forth never slowed, kept constantly fueled by observation, speculation, and a heaping dose of mockery. The contrast between the gimlet stare and resentful silence at the start of their first run was stark.

Płotka kept a watch on them as well, eyes narrowed. "They're _up_ to something," she insisted.

"Never doubted it," Geralt agreed. He brushed a hand down her back and turned to greet Eskel at the sound of his arrival, Ruvsa trundling only a pace behind as his usual massive, blonde-furred shadow. When they reached the vantage point, Eskel swung a companionable arm around Geralt's shoulders. "Geralt! Since when've you been willing to rise before the winter sun?"

Geralt opened his mouth, but Płotka answered for him, never taking her eyes off Lambert and Mal. "Because those two," she stated, with more gravity than Geralt thought it expressly needed, "are _up_ to something."

Ruvsa started the somewhat ponderous rise to stand to her full height, which had finally topped out at a towering nine feet. She'd settled as a bear, that everyone had known for certain, but it'd been a standing point of contention on what _kind_ of bear she was among those in Kaer Morhen with an interest in daemon taxonomy. She'd had the build and face of a brown bear, but in a gold-blonde color and at a size even more massive than any brown bear a witcher had seen. Still now they've yet to find a solid answer on her; unhelped by Eskel and Ruvsa both from the start satisfied to consider her 'a big bear' and leave it at that.

She planted a single paw atop Eskel's head-- all she could fit, nowadays, the way it already spanned his crown, and used her considerable vantage to peer over to Płotka's view. "...Just one thing?" she husked, slow and amused. "That _is_ curious."

Eskel shifted, careful to not dislodge himself as daemon-ballast, and looked as well. "Take it that's the lil' firestarter I keep hearing about?"

"Didn't think he was a natural for signs. Is that just a nickname, or…" Geralt started.

"He is not, and it is not," Płotka said with a distinct note of sourness. Any further explanation is delayed by Varin's sharp starting whistle and the sound of a cohort scrambling down the first rough incline cliffside, boys and daemons attempting clumsy exchanges of the short-form directives and signals they'd been training in. It's a good fit for the noise made by their clumsy footing.

Despite the enduring eagerness of the youngling pair the Witchers were watching, they weren't rash about it. Lambert and Mal picked their way down the slope in a careful tandem of measured slides-and-stops. As they made their way out of view, Płotka stood and made a crisp turn with clear intent to follow. Geralt patted Eskel on the back and shrugged off his arm. "Coming with us?"

"S'pose being fire lookout's as much of the job already," Eskel said, and Ruvsa rumbled in assent.

* * *

Nothing seemed off at the start. In fact, Lambert had been doing particularly well compared to his peers. Eskel eyed his progress with interest as they shadowed at a leisurely pace. "Only his second run?" he asked. "They're making some smart choices."

"Mm. As they should, given the time spent tarrying on the first," Płotka agreed, as Lambert and Mal vaulted the last obstacle on the stone field firmly in the front of the pack.

"Prescient," Geralt commented to Płotka, not more than a minute after. Lambert was now seated on one of the last of the scattered boulders before the broad, uneven ledge where the path up the mountain started proper. Mal had clambered back on his shoulders, and the pair were making themselves quite comfortable for what ought to have been at most a quick breather, if they wanted to keep their lead.

The boy's got taste, at least. It's about the best spot to pick to take in the scenery of it. The wide ledge ahead of them and its sloping angle offered a sweeping view up the side of the full course. Even to eyes yet-to-be-Grassed, the view was impressively daunting. The sharp silhouettes and ragged, fluttering pennants they'd start sending the older boys to race for in the lead-up to their last Trial made threat at the further challenge structured within it.

When the other pairs started trickling through, in various states of disheveled and breathless, Lambert and Mal were content to ignore them totally. Boys and daemons moving onward gave wide and baffled berth to what looked to be a spirited argument, Lambert's flaring sentiment and emphatic gestures in counter to Mal's quick-fired strings of words and piping insistences. One of the boys, daemon pattering alongside him as a compact, sharp-eyed terrier, attempted to question them and was quite literally shouted off for his trouble.

Eskel let out a snort of disbelief and Geralt had to tilt to the side to get a better look when the charcoal-stick came out. Lambert scooched himself and his passenger to a large, flat portion of rock and moved to arguing with Mal over whatever he was drawing with their guidance, Mal crawling off his shoulders to scratch thin, messy lines of white into the rock itself with-- "That can't be their claws that's doing that," Geralt said, tilting his head further. "Not before their Grasses."

"Think she's-- they're," Eskel corrects with an apologetic nod to Ruvsa as she butts into his shoulder with a gentle swing of her massive head that'd still likely send a man less solid stumbling, "Think they're dragging a softer rock-pebble under their paw. Pretty clever, I'd say, except for now they're last in place over that-- s'that a ladder they're drawing?"

Eskel, Płotka, and Ruvsa joined Geralt in the twisting perspective to get a look, Ruvsa rising to her advantage again. "Eskel," she said, drawing the words out. "Ghost's ladders."

"What's that?" Geralt asked, in tandem to Płotka's much more exasperated appeal of "Must there now be _ghosts_?"

Eskel shook his head, eyes still trained on the curious pair below. "Nn, not like that. Nothin' strange-- well, it's strange they're doing it _now_ , if that's what they're doing. S'a way for a group to draw lots, where each player'll pick their route upwards on the ladders--"

Ruvsa cut him off with a solemn report. "They're up."

The argument settled to the last exchanges of sniping between Mal and Lambert as they hopped off their makeshift stone slate-and-seat. Lambert dusted off his clothes and Mal trotted forward to the widened ledge.

Geralt brushed the backs of his knuckles against the soft rise of fur that outlined Płotka's shoulder. "So they've picked their route."

Płotka still doesn't look at him. She'd kept her attention below entirely since they settled on the overlook. Her tail's lashing rhythm sped and slowed as situation witnessed warranted, but hadn't stopped completely yet since run-start, if Geralt's kept count.

"But there's not a route to _pick_ ," she murmured under her breath, half to him and sundry and half in thought to herself. "The course is single passage by design-- oh, now what are they doing."

Lambert and Mal had hopped up the first rising jut of the raw cliff tangent to the way to the next obstacle. "Climbing?" Eskel offered, but even he sounded skeptical about the idea. There wasn't anywhere to go but up, from where the two were, and that was a sheer cliff face. Climbable in theory, being dotted in elfinwood and small shelves of rock, but the ice and snow would make it arduous for even a witcher without the proper tools.

Still, boy and wolverine are undeterred, clambering higher, though they're fast reaching the point where the ice built-up will have made it impossible. Mal seemed to be doing a much better job at it. Their wickedly sharp claws and wide paws are a good match for their relatively light weight, and they've settled quite quickly into a hop-heave sort of climbing style that belies the amount of power going into each heft and vault. "I... think they _are_ going to try climbing," Geralt said.

Płotka stood and darted forward to the edge of the outlook. "That's-- they can't _do_ that." She sounded strangled. Geralt imagined she was grappling with the same collision the rest of them were running up against: the lack of certainty over whether they could, in fact, do that.

"No, no," Eskel said, in answer to the unspoken questions that now swirled heavy in the air. "He _can't_ do that in the first place. That's not the sort of gear we keep in the cub's reach."

"Got an awl," Ruvsa noted.

Eskel and Geralt joined Płotka at the edge of the outlook now, squinting to get a better look at the long, thin spire of metal Lambert is using to chip at the foremost chunk of ice. "Longer than any awl I've ever seen," Geralt commented. "Where did he get that?"

"Longer than any in the workshops here," Eskel agreed. "If it's even-- don't think it has a handle. Or maybe it-- huh. We leave long metal spikes around for our boys to play with?"

"We do not," Płotka said, with the sort of immediate testiness that meant she'd been knocked off her balance and liked it not at all. "Where did he find _\--_ is that a docker's hook?"

Having carved a chunk of the smoothed wind-crust snow off with his awl and gained access to the craggier rock and alpine ice below, Lambert drew what very much looked like a docker's hook, if someone had sized it more fittingly to a child's hand. He plunged it into a crevasse and heaved himself to bring him level with Mal, who took a moment to toss their head back and cackle loud enough they could pick up the triumphant notes from their vantage.

"I _know_ nobody lets the cubs run around with dock hooks," Eskel said, concerned. "And how'd he manage to smuggle these up to the Keep with no one findin' 'em until now?"

"Ah," Ruvsa said lowly. She dropped to her paws, nudged Eskel in the center of his shoulders with her head, and turned to leave back to the trailhead. Eskel followed obediently with a brief wave, which Geralt returned in kind and Płotka with an absent flick of her tail. Ruvsa tended to think through problems in the implacable manner of stone rolling down a hill; interrupting where it led her to grill her for the details would only risk throwing her off her course. Wherever she was taking Eskel, Geralt trusted it'd either be a lead to the rapidly escalating situation or a lead they could cross off the list.

Lambert was grinning, his dark eyes and the gap in his teeth black points at the distance, and he gestured excitedly towards Mal and then upwards, pointing from spot-to-spot in a way that looked very much like… Geralt shifted his attention back to the strange little ladder they'd drawn on the rock to check for sure. "Too small for a dock hook, isn't it?" Geralt said.

"We've more pressing concerns than the scale, Geralt. Or even where it came from. I really think he's trying to climb up the cliff catercorner to the course." Płotka had begun a full-circuit pacing of the edge at where they stood, her head rotating to keep the mountaineering younglings in view. "Why would he-- he'll break his neck and leave Mal to Dust, those foolhardy, _difficult_ little--"

Geralt finished mapping the little scratched-out route to his best estimate of its ending-point. He hummed. "Think they're aiming for that col in particular." He pointed upward. If Geralt had it correctly, that little gap between the mountain ridges would leave them right above the ropes section, where netting had been strung over the pits for the youngling's run. It would be a smart way to handle the inevitable problem of descending; they'd shaped the walls on the inner parts of the course specifically to make them unscalable without the advanced training and physique they'd have after the Trials.

"That would cut out most of the course!" Płotka said, tracking his gesture. "They can't-- Geralt, they can't _do_ that."

Geralt observed Lambert and Mal on their arduous process of ascent. Mal, much handier on the inclines, seemed to be hopping the next step up and then encouraging and heckling Lambert in turn. For his part Lambert had produced some scrap rope that he could actually have picked up from one of the small heaps they have in the workshops and gripped the knotted ends in both hands to loop around outcrops too small or difficult to grip with both. At the time they're making already, if they actually pull it off they'll have technically managed to land the first place by a frankly impossible margin. "Well," he said, "they're doing it."

Płotka's long paces had been getting shorter and shorter in range in scale to her raising agitation. "I've got to speak to-- Vesemir would-- and _Varin--_ ah, but in time-- _fuck_ ," Płotka said, with the momentous pause and deep feeling that always gives her rare use of it such an impact, and took off at a silent-but-hurried lope.

"...So I guess I'll keep an eye on them in the meantime," Geralt told the empty clifftop around him, and settled back to watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daemon Profile (short cut)
> 
> Ruvsa, the [blonde Kodiak bear](https://www.google.com/search?q=blonde+kodiak+bear&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS832US832&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiTuaSo0tzrAhWrIDQIHchTBXYQ_AUoAXoECBYQAw&biw=1536&bih=754).
> 
> the animal
> 
> The Kodiak bears are a subspecies of the brown bear best described as "what if grizzlies… _but bigger?_ " Nature is amazing. Also, terrifying. They come in shades of white-blonde downwards, with the blonde and copper-furred bears more often female.
> 
> the name
> 
> Ruvsa's name is Sami in origin, and translates to "Rose". The name is a remainder from Eskel's childhood before the Trials. He can't remember much about his mother, but he's always remembered that her daemon chose the name "Rose" for his own because no matter how Ruvsa settled, there would likely be a rose out there in her color.  
> 
> 
> ***
> 
> fun fact: the working name for this fic is "rainbow road" specifically because the thing that sparked it all was the passing thought "man, if the wolf lads played mariokart lambert would absolutely be the one who would use that one rainbow road exploit that skips half the course and then when challenged argue that so long as it's part of the base game when shipped it's not _cheating_ , it's _strategy they never bothered to learn._ "
> 
> footnotes:
> 
> ghost ladder is a reference to [ghost leg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Leg)! or as my fellow weebs will likely recognize, amidakuji. it's known as 'ladder climbing' in korean, which i found interesting having only seen it done downwards myself.
> 
> yes, wolverines [do, in fact, pick fights with mountains](https://glacierguides.com/wolverines/). and apparently _win_ , there's a wolverine on record who scaled a 5000 foot cliff face before any human had done… in 90 total minutes.


	4. Third, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shorter update, but AN update, so i'm hoping it'll get me rolling to finish up part 3 in three parts. i'll add ruvsa's further footnotes later, probably! i'm just tryna get this out for the subscribers.

Whether Płotka or Eskel had gotten the word out, it was clear soon enough Lambert and Mal's ascent had been noticed.

The Wolf school had a long-established system in place for communication between the witchers working chaperone on the Killer. The fastest of the witcher's daemons on land and air would be sent off as messengers, flitting from man to man to deliver a brief summary of facts, the names of the men most needed, and where they'll be needed, to be passed on if they're found by another before the runner does.

It isn't a system built for nuance; it hadn't had to be. In every encounter with the runner-system Geralt had previously, it came down to reporting a grave injury on the course. The priority was extracting the boy and daemon as safely and quickly as possible and saving them if they could. The brief details they could pass along had saved more than one life for it when quick action was of the essence, but it didn't leave much room to ask for _clarification_.

Geralt had, through either luck or a subconscious foresight, an excellent view from the ridge for watching the whole well-versed process of it slowly unravel through the weight of only real flaw it just wasn't made to handle: people with questions.

The protocol handled the known, not the unprecedented. With no authority on the matter to turn to, it's a mess of communication sent up and down the line, where half of them are trying to have a debate on what to do about Lambert, the other half is still trying to puzzle out what is going on and what they're supposed to be doing, and from the looks of it even some of the daemons running messenger are getting downright snippy about the workings of it.

Geralt had moved to the bottom of the ridge Lambert climbed to keep him fully in sight, two small shapes clinging to the cliff-face, when Eskel and Ruvsa return.

"Ruvsa was right," Eskel reported, jerking a thumb behind him. She nodded. "The little hooligan just raided the butcher's hut."

"A boning hook, a larding needle, and two gambrels," Ruvsa solemnly reported.

"So that's where he got those double-ended hooks of his," Geralt considered. Lambert had pulled them out when he'd gotten to the icier parts of his summit. "Couldn't place them, but now I see it."

"It'd only ever work as climbing gear for a boy that small," Eskel said with a rueful shake of his head. "But it'd work, if you were mad enough to think of it. What d'you suppose we do?"

Geralt considered. "Someone needs to get the men's heads back on the course. The rest of the boys still need watching. Varin's no fool when he thinks someone's making one of him; he'll have figured out where Lambert's headed--"

"--And be lying in wait," Eskel finished with a grimace. "We'll see about minding the rest of the children."

"And leave minding Varin to me?" Geralt teased. "Taking the easy one."

"Geralt. You don't need to," Ruvsa said.

Geralt can hear what Ruvsa isn't saying; how attaching yourself to the fate of any one boy before their first Trial is risking only being hurt. How this won't just be a matter of Płotka's ever-insistence that all she's responsible for be orderly, if Geralt starts involving himself enough to be heard.

Geralt shook his head. "For now, let's just see about handling Varin."

* * *

"--It's still the rule of kitchen duty, and you're due for a hell of a hiding, boy--"

"-- _And I said_ it weren't the kitchen I took it from!! Ain't no _rule_ 'gainst takin' stuff from the butcher's hut--"

"No rule _anywhere_ ," Mal chimed in, directly after Lambert's peevish counter, "Do you think we're _stupid?_ We checked--"

Lambert and Mal were already having it out with Varin when Geralt made it to the ropes course, two small figures in a loose circle of larger ones. He grimaces to the small group of chaperones and daemons and gets a similarly grim look in return.

No doubt they'd started into it already keyed up, and the heavy-landing hoofbeats pending the arrival of Idelya to back Varin's affront doesn't seem like it'd help it end calmer. There was no real place to get a word in between Lambert's sharply pointed replies and Mal's whipcrack follow-ups.

"-- _You_ were the one who made us memorize those stupid kitchen rules, we know 'em better'n you--"

"We _checked_ ," Mal repeated, with all the strength of a demand.

"Whatever you're trying to prove--" Varin begun, red in the face, and Lambert, fists balled-up and scowling, interjected with "--I don't gotta _prove_ nothing 'bout anything! I got _proof!_ It just _is!_ "

" _We checked!!_ " Mal shrilled.

It'd have been easier, Geralt reflected, if the intent had actually been about showing them all up. Arrogance and grandstanding had taken the lives of enough of their kind it was just cause to take a pup down a peg. Instead, both sides are sharing in the mounting frustration, sparking to genuine anger; that the external reality would intrude on their internal logic on how it was supposed to go.

As if on cue, Idelya arrived in a burst of huffing outrage, pawing at the dirt and raising clouds of dust in her wake. The space her entrance provided granted her one demand of " _What_ is the meaning of this!?" before it all devolved into more noise.

"If the intent mattered we wouldn't need t'make _ruuuuules_ ," Lambert mocked, clear and high above the exclamations. One of Varin's choice phrases when he punished a boy the hardest aimed right back at him. "It's your rule, ain't it? So you'll stick _by_ it, won't you?"

" _HAH_ ," Mal yelled, snarled in between hurried breaths as they pace back-and-forth before Lambert.

Varin had now turned a deep crimson, likely closest to hitting a small child out of sheer anger and not measured punishment Geralt had ever seen. He starts pushing the other chaperones clear, preparing to move in and disarm things himself, when a barked " _Varin!!_ " shocked them all to silence.

Salvör sprinted up to the group, Płotka right on her heels at a run and Vesemir not far behind them both. There was a murmur amongst the chaperones. Not many had cause to hear Salvör's spoken voice before, and it may have been Lambert and Mal's first, from how they'd both stopped and turned to stare wide-eyed at her as if she'd said far more than just Varin's name.

"Idelya!" Płotka snapped, right on her heels, with the crisply disapproving delivery that gained her nicknames like 'the governess'. "Are you so easily riled by the actions of cubs?"

"I'll _handle_ this, Vesemir," Varin said, not willing to turn away from the boy. Lambert gave back in kind if not size, Geralt noted. The taut, animalistic snarl of raw rage was about as discomfiting to see on the face of a human child as his daemon's ghoulish parody-grin in the dark.

"We'll see what needs handling--" Vesemir started firmly.

"You _beasts_. You ungodly _animals_ ," seethed Mal, the words bursting out like they simply cannot contain them, digging dark rends into the packed earth beneath them. "We did your, your _worthless test_ , but because we did it _better than you_ it's done _wrong_ , just because-- you stupid, _wicked_ creatures, you're _all_ the same, how-- how _dare_ you, you try to _force_ your will on us every time, every time, even when we just did it _better than you_ \--"

"Lambert," Vesemir rapped out, direct. "control your daemon."

"You can try," Lambert grit out, too low and too dangerous to fit well on the high and childish tones. He was well-about vibrating with rage, or possibly the effort to stay still, flushed red in the high arches of his cheeks and white-lipped from how tightly he'd been holding his undisguised sneer.

They're taken aback for a moment, the remaining men and their daemons all, by the words of such a brazen challenge from a boy so young.

"Prove Mal wrong," Lambert followed, and it's a toss of cold water over the men still gathered, that Lambert hadn't even considered the implications of challenging another to handle his daemon. The intensity boy and daemon both radiated in the moment was easy to be caught up in, easy to forget that fundamentally they were dealing only with one loud, dissatisfied child.

The moment now being so thoroughly broken had the other chaperones and daemons already milling about to get gone, every man reminded by Vesemir's presence that they'd had other duties to attend to beyond just spectating a bout.

"You can't just _punish_ me when you _can't_ prove me wrong and pretend that makes you _right_ ," Lambert continued, tone still raw and searing, yet unaware of how suddenly the sea-change had thus taken.

Vesemir just sighed, breathing out in the same slow, tired manner of his when dealing with difficult pups that leached away the tension from the whole scene. Geralt took that as his cue and moved to Varin, patting him on the shoulder and tilting his chin towards Vesemir with a sympathetic quirk of his mouth.

"Take a walk," he advised Varin, nodding towards Vesemir. "Płotka and I will handle this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ruvsa: further
> 
> ruvsa actually caused a near-doctrinal crisis in the kaer morhen daemon-spotting community as her settling caused a rift between team “she’s got to be an ice bear, because she is big and pale”, populated by the more casual birdwatcher-esque daemon-spotters, and team “whatever she is, it’s NOT an ice bear, because the cranial shape that we _cross-referenced to check_ _for sure_ is all _wrong_ so _stop saying she’s an ice bear_ ” populated by the Serious Daemon Taxonomists, of which Geralt is one.
> 
> footnotes:
> 
> a [boning hook](https://www.google.com/search?q=boning+hook&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxh-fIx4jtAhUzCTQIHY73D8cQ_AUoAnoECAYQBA&biw=1536&bih=754) would be quite easily mistaken for a [ docker's hook](https://www.google.com/search?q=docker%27s+hook&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiYvNzLx4jtAhX7AzQIHZnWDZsQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=docker%27s+hook&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIECAAQHjoECAAQQzoFCAAQsQM6AggAOggIABCxAxCDAToHCAAQsQMQQ1DuhQJY4J0CYPygAmgAcAB4AIABX4gBtAiSAQIxNJgBAKABAaoBC2d3cy13aXotaW1nsAEAwAEB&sclient=img&ei=EDmzX5j0CvuH0PEPma232Ak&bih=754&biw=1536) at a distance.
> 
> [larding needles](https://www.google.com/search?q=larding+needle&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjv2NTdx4jtAhVNATQIHdzxAwcQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=larding+needle&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzICCAAyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBgyBAgAEBg6BQgAELEDOggIABCxAxCDAToECAAQQzoGCAAQBRAeUIvQAlij5wJg9ugCaAJwAHgAgAFRiAH1CJIBAjE2mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=NTmzX6_qMM2C0PEP3OOPOA&bih=754&biw=1536) are used to distribute cuttings of fat throughout a meat; often a necessity for game-heavy diets.
> 
> a [butcher's gambrel](https://www.google.com/search?q=gambrel+butcher&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi2td-oyIjtAhWEBzQIHeLlAiAQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=gambrel+&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQARgAMgQIIxAnMgcIABCxAxBDMgQIABBDMgQIABBDMgQIABBDMgIIADICCAAyBAgAEEMyAggAMgIIAFCoCFioCGDJFGgAcAB4AIABXogBXpIBATGYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ8ABAQ&sclient=img&ei=0zmzX_b_D4SP0PEP4suLgAI&bih=697&biw=1536&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS832US832) is a tool to hang meat.


	5. Third, Part Three

-

"--Didn't steal _nothing_ ," Lambert is still protesting after Geralt and Płotka herded them from Varin and away from the main course. "The leather's all scrap, rope was too, and I sew't the handlings' in myself, and all I _ever_ took that _anybody_ kept for using still were the thread--"

"Oh but _Lambert_ ," Mal chimed in, taking advantage of the new clearing they've arrived at to round on them all. Their hackles haven't stopped bristling, in counter to the sugary sweetness of their tone. "I didst not spin thine thread from _mine own fur_ , so clearly what we deserve is the _stocks_ forevermore--"

"Mal, you _know_ the issue here is more than the material--" Płotka cut in, and was cut off by Mal's wounded yowl.

"So _what!_ So _what!_ It weren't fair! It's _never fair_ unless _we're_ in trouble. The rules work on _us_ when it's _us_ but when _we_ use them back then they're never really _the rules_ at all!" Mal's voice had taken on a wretched-sounding whine.

"--There will always be gaps in comprehensive rulings, but it's hardly an excuse to knowingly abuse them when the _point_ of the course is for boys to--"

"-- _So what!_ Rules are supposed to be _fair_. Just, just-- just _ruling_ , all the time, just b'cause you're stronger, it ain't _never_ fair and it's only the people it's _actually_ fair on that keep, keep _pretending_ like it _is_ , like rules here are _fair!!_ "

"--The rules that apply to your elders are earned by your elders--"

"--Oh, like _Varin_? Like Varin does? Like Varin's ever gonna--"

"--Mal, will you _please_ let me--"

Geralt and Lambert stood apart, Mal at the edge of Lambert's range as Płotka sat on her hind-legs, tail casting from side-to-side on a rhythm unhurried by Mal's short, frenetic paces. Lambert has his arms crossed, seething quietly and watching with intent eyes while Mal vents their grievance.

"About Varin," Geralt said, letting the daemons have it out. Lambert's eyes cast over to him. "Might go smoother with him if you make the effort to not be such a smartass.”

“Weren’t even being a smartass. S'just everyone comes off like a smartass when you’re talking to a dumbass,” Lambert stated. It’s with the sort of insulting frankness only a child could really pull off; Lambert, better than most. “The contrast punches it up.”

“That, right there,” Geralt pointed out tranquilly. “That’s what I mean about the being a little smartass.”

Lambert wrinkled his nose and kept his eyes forward. “And I stand by what I said,” he concluded after a long moment, with a carefully pointed tartness.

There’s a sudden, nearly imperceptible tenseness to him. Tension might be the right word for it. There’s the difference between the muscle-tightening of fear and the muscle-tautening of one poised for flight.

Careful, Geralt thought, and that quick flicker of instinct kept him from biting off his single, huffed laugh at the jibe.

Lambert’s eyes remain trained ahead, but Geralt saw him settle back in that same subtle way he’d keyed himself up. It was only when Lambert next breathed out that Geralt realized he’d also been holding his breath.

The air settled between them just in time for Mal to conclude with an "Ugh! _Ugh!!_ She's being _impossible_. Lambert! _Switch!!_ "

At the demand, Lambert moved forward to take over arguing with Płotka, Mal tramping back to take his previous position next to Geralt. It's impressive in how seamlessly the boy picks up the thread of the argument, given he hadn't been following along. Płotka allowed the retreat and re-armament, though looked no less exasperated for it.

"...So," Geralt asked, upon Mal's arrival, "What's Mal short for?"

"Malcontent, that's what I am," Mal fumed. “If being _right_ about it doesn’t _work_ , then why do _anything_? What’s the _point_? What are we here for, what– why are we, we _even here_ if being _right_ doesn’t _matter?_ ”

Mal prowled frenetically at the borders of their bond. Their claws flexed further gouges into the dirt with each punched-out emphasis, the hissing spit of their rage more complement than counter to the scouring of shouted fury Płotka was taking from Lambert straight-on while Geralt and Mal stayed the sidelines.

“If the truth isn’t the _point_ , then what is?” Mal continued, and if you only paid attention to the tone, it’d probably be easy to take it as a demand and not a plea. “Then what’s the point of _anything??_ ”

Geralt’s silent for a moment as he considered. “You ask some big questions, little wolf,” he finally said.

“M'not a _wolf_ ,” Mal snapped.

“Mm,” Geralt agreed. “But I didn’t think you’d take it well if I started calling you ‘large weasel’.”

"Well-- well," Mal said, "That's different."

"Mm." Geralt nodded. "Sometimes, things can be right and still not fit."

"You're fakes, you're liars, you're _cowards who ain't even brave enough to name what you are_ ," Lambert finally howled, loud enough to drown out Mal's chance to reply.

" _Hsst_ ," Płotka rapped out whip-sharply, and the force of the direct rebuke in the face of her previous wall of exasperated placations startled both Lambert and Mal into further silence.

"Volume, Lambert," she instructed. "We are not so fully out of range."

Lambert glances over his shoulder, back from where they came. "I know-- I fucking know that," Lambert continued, delivered both mutinously and at lower volume. It's thrown him off his pace, at least. Płotka wasn't wrong. For a kid so intent on yelling at the whole world, he could stand to learn how to listen.

"None of what you're saying is wrong here, really," Geralt broke the silence evenly. Both Lambert and Mal whip their heads around to stare at him, two pairs of little black marbles outlined in white.

Geralt kept down the smile. "I had to go through realizing it too."

Not nearly this young, for him or Płotka both, but the kid hasn't slowed down much in any other aspect since Geralt had started watching him. Altogether, not unsurprising.

"And anyway," Geralt continued, "The point to running the course is for the boys whose daemons haven't settled. The two of you should just be considering it exercise."

"Well why didn't anyone explain that was the point at the start, then," Mal challenged sourly.

"Most people don't need the full explanation."

"Well that's _stupid_."

"I have found, in my time, that the sort of things we qualify as stupidity from others is most often inattention at its heart," Plotka said tranquilly.

"I don't contest that Varin and Idelya are twits," she followed, and Mal and Lambert's heads whipped-round to stare wide-eyed at her, now. "But it is part of existence that there will be twits, and at times, they will have power over you. And what you must do is endure, and persist."

"But they're _wrong_ ," Mal said. "So many things are _wrong_."

"Sometimes, yes," Płotka answered tranquilly. "But one can only change their own behavior."

Both Mal and Lambert continue to stare at her, the overt shock already souring into squinting suspicion. Geralt cleared his throat, turning their heads again. "I guess the way I'd put it is you can keep letting it cut into you, or you can form a callus."

Geralt held his own something-dotted palm as evidence. "it's like Vesemir said--"

"Uuuuggghhhh," Lambert and Mal chorus in a sudden break of tension, tossing their heads back to groan it to the sky.

"--Calluses just mean you can keep your grip," Geralt said, Płotka chiming in to finish the axiom in tandem.

" _Ugh!!_ " Mal shrieked again, this time at piercing volume.

* * *

When they've gotten the pair calmed down enough, they shepherd them both back to rejoin their cohort and head to the Keep. Eskel steps up as the one between the two of them who can lie more convincingly and confirms to Varin that Płotka really gave it to them, and he seems satisfied enough with that.

Geralt gave the real report to Vesemir in his office. "At this point, I'm more concerned about Varin when it comes to retaliation," he concluded.

"Have more faith in him," Vesemir dismissed. "He's built a head of steam, but it won't last. This is hardly the _first_ difficult child he's nonetheless helped shape into a good witcher." He gave Geralt a meaningful look, and Geralt ducked his head to hide his smile.

"Still," Geralt said, "He ever get a kid like that?"

"No," Vesemir said, with a long and weary sigh. "I suppose none of them hold a candle to handling that boy."

* * *

There are two changes, after that day on the cliffs. Mal, apparently left unsatisfied enough by their argument, finally deigns to speak to Płotka in the nightly visits, though it's mostly of their daily grievances.

" _Ugh_ ," Geralt can hear Mal whine from their tiny room, "I _hate_ this _stupid_ cult."

Płotka sighed. "Little wolf," she said, "This is not a cult."

"Oh _sor-ree_ , I got distracted by all the _child sacrificing_ in the _remote mountain compound_ with the _secretive trials_ and _everything_. It's a _cult_ , Płotka, it's just the god you all worship is 'the greater good'."

"And is that such a bad god to worship?" Płotka asked.

"...Fuck," Mal finally said, after a long while.

"Mm," Płotka agreed.

The second involved Mal and Lambert both. Geralt found it out the hard way, when Lambert dumped a load of snow shoveled up from where the boys were sent to clear the ramparts right onto his head from above while Mal cackled-screamed. " _Malice aforethought!!_ "

Geralt and Płotka talk about it occasionally among themselves in the week after, but never end up resolving whether that was another name or simply their declaration of intent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> geralt was involved enough in the debate that at one point when shown an ancient polar bear’s skull taken somewhere as an ancestral trophy he made a sketch of it that he then preserved more carefully than at times his own wellbeing just to bring it home and definitively prove that SEE, he saw a real ice bear skull and it was CLEARLY SLENDER with HIGHER ORBITALS just like the codex said, GWELD,
> 
> meanwhile eskel and ruvsa have had all the while absolutely no stake or investment in this codification war, other than sitting there while one of the others rants at them why she has to be x because she can’t be y and go “mnn,” and “huh,” and “that so,” at appropriate intervals. they can’t fault them for passion


	6. Fourth

The first Trial always loomed largest over the boys. The Trial of the Grasses: the one test that no amount of skills or training could prepare them for, where they would emerge a young witcher and a settled daemon or not at all.

Lambert, in what's shaped up to be his usual fashion, put on the appearance of firmly rejecting to bow under the thick pall of dread during the days, causing the same amounts of trouble as always but now only all the more defiantly.

Mal's concerns came out in the nights.

"So it's true then, that you lose your past," Geralt heard Mal demand.

"Memory loss has happened," Płotka allowed tranquilly.

"So either way you fucking _die_. That's _great_ , Płotka."

"That's a rather dramatic interpretation," came the cool reply.

"Fuck _you_ ," Mal hissed. "The fact that we survived made us who we are. If that's gone, whatever's shuffling around in the meat-suit won't be Mal and it certainly won't be _Lambert_. And, and you know what, if I lose it all, then no one will _ever_ know my name or whether I'm a boy or a girl, not ever."

"You know," Płotka said, "The surest way to keep your secrets through the trial is to share them with someone before it."

" _No,_ " Mal snapped. "Either we'll pass the trials and the question's irrelevant 'cuz we'll we creepy freaks _like you_ or we'll die and I'll be sure to disappear before you get a look and then you'll _never, ever know_."

"You look almost satisfied by the idea."

"I want it to matter. At least to someone, I want to matter. Whether I die or not, no one will _ever, ever know_. You can just, just _die_ unsatisfied, Płotka. Just like we might."

A sigh. "The pair of you are at times so very spiteful, little wolf."

"We work with what we got. I want to matter. Why else are we here?"

"The Law of Surprise--"

"Not _that_ , you tiny-minded _smoothbrain_. _Here_. Don't you ever wonder? Like the-- the Dust, from the lessons, that we'll see if we… survive your fucking trials. Why am I talking to you about this?"

"Is this what you and Lambert talk about, on your own?"

"What's it to you?"

"It's just that I'm pleased," Płotka said. "You've been paying attention in lessons, after all."

" _No_ ," Mal insisted.

* * *

When the ice starts to thaw in slow drips and the Trials become less of a threatening unknown and more of a happening nigh is when the explosions happen, boys worried about the future and upset at their lot and no idea how to express either but to do so all at once.

Lambert, for all his bravado leading up to it, followed the pattern fairly standard. One day he just threw his practice sword down in the yard and then started throwing an almighty fit.

Geralt was there to see it, supervising the older lads in their swordwork, and he managed to get there first to pin Lambert down, small body thrashing with more rage and anguish than could fit well in a boy so small.

"All you ever do is take!" he howled, in between attempting vicious bites at Geralt's forearms. "All you ever, _ever_ do is fucking take! You took me, my future, you're gonna, you're gonna take Mal and make me a monster and I can't even be _me_ for it because you want to _take that too,_ all you _ever_ do is take and take and take--"

Unlike the stir Lambert caused on the Killer, this the older witchers are familiar with. They don't miss a beat, continuing the lesson in his stead while Geralt held the boy in place until Lambert tired himself out and Mal's stopped their high, whining keen, voice thin and strained as it all petered out.

Finally, when Lambert had exhausted himself back into no option but calmness again, Geralt let him go.

"It's not _fair_ ," Lambert finally said as he sat up, and there's an artless and abject misery to it, a stark reminder that bright and canny as he is, he is still very young, raw in the way skin suffers before the first callus. "I don't even have anything else that's mine _left_ , and you're taking that too."

He seemed more aggravated at this point by his own emotional display, scrubbing roughly at his eyes with the back of his hand and turning away from them all.

It isn't the first explosion an instructor handled from a pre-Trial boy, and it won't be the last. Letting them get it all out doesn't make it better, but it makes them feel a bit better, and sometimes that's what you can do.

Later on, when it all had time to cool, Geralt told him it was all right. "I'm a witcher; I can take it."

Lambert had scowled and tried to kick him.

* * *

Płotka led Geralt in to offering counsel, after that.

"You know," Geralt told Mal and Lambert, who are sitting on the floor of the armory while Lambert polishes his punishment-fittings, "Early settlers tend to hang on to their memories more than most." Given what he'd known of them, he'd never got the impression they'd considered it a plus.

Mal and Lambert share an incredulous look.

"But it can also help with the new body strength, if you don't have the comparison to trip you up." Płotka, sitting back, nodded approvingly.

"Why are you telling us this?" Lambert demanded, jabbing towards Geralt with the polishing cloth.

"The conditions of early settlers may differ--" Płotka began, and is cut off by Mal's incredulous bark of laughter.

"What do you mean, early _settlers_. Who here isn't an early settler? You and Geralt are _early settlers_ ," Mal said. "What do you think the _Trial_ is?"

"We made a choice," Płotka started.

"Oh, yeah," Lambert was the one laughing now. "Subject a child t'the _excruciating_ physical pain and make the daemon watch it all and like some _magic ritual_ it also settles your daemon."

"Is _that_ what they told you," Mal continued, sneering with all their sharp white teeth. "I know you're not stupid, Płotka, but you really might try being more clever."

Geralt can't think of a counter to that, and they walk off with Mal's cackle in their ear.

"Can't win them all," Geralt said, as Płotka sat on the bed, kneading at her pillow with a single-minded intensity.

"Oh, just _stop_ ," she scolded severely.

* * *

Geralt brought it up to Vesemir and Salvör, later.

"Aye, it is so," he said. "If we keep the daemon safe, only to watch as the boy suffers, it-- selects for the type meant to be a witcher."

"If it's not traumatic enough to witness to settle them--" Geralt considered.

"Then even if they survive, they cannot be allowed the power they've been given," Vesemir concluded gravely. "But that is the matter for the instructors. How did you figure it out?"

"I didn't. Not until I talked to Mal and Lambert."

"It would be them," Vesemir glumly reflected. "They spread questioning authority like human's winter illness."

"Hope you don't expect to put a stop to it," Geralt said. "It's a pain now, but if he ever learns to keep his conclusions to himself, it's the sort of quality I'd want in any boy we send out."

Especially nowadays, he reflected. The freeze of relationships with the humans below meant they relied on children tithed through the Law more and more.

"Well, we need it," Geralt concluded.

"An authority unwilling to be tested has failed the most fundamental test," Salvör agreed. It's rare for her to speak even in Geralt's company, but she always has something worthwhile to say.

* * *

The Trial of the Grasses was grueling and horrible as it always was to witness.

And as always, far moreso for the boys than those who gave it.

It was Varin and Idelya who carried snow in all night, shoveling and packing around the writhing, red-skinned figures on the cot to keep the boys' temperature down. There was a reason why Varin taught the youngest boys-- for all his harshness, he did so because he wished the most for his charges to survive.

Mal and Lambert survived it. After the first few days, when they're firmly in the clear of it, Geralt came to visit.

"Still you in there?" he asked the small figure on the cot, Mal curled up and just as exhausted by his pillow.

Lambert attempted to give that dead-eyed stare of his stone-wall defiance. Geralt noted it really has lost its impact, now that you can see the slits of his new pupils. It'll get him far with the humans when he grows into it, though.

"My field of fucks lies fallow before me, Geralt," Lambert said, mustering great effort to gesture in a wide arc in front of him.

"No crop this year," Mal chorused drowsily.

Geralt managed to hold in his laugh until he was out of their new range to hear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Salvör's name is Icelandic, and means "hall defender". Vesemir calls her Salka.


	7. Fifth

The night before they left back for the Path, Geralt went with Płotka for the nightly check in.

"...So what's Mal short for?" he had asked.

Mal had given him one of their ghoulish people-grins. "Malediction," they said, with gravity. "And so if you die out there, the last thing you'll hear is me _laughing_ at you for being so _dull_."

Geralt smiled, then. "So I'll try not to, I guess."

"Well," Mal had said. "Good."

* * *

Geralt only sees the pair in fits and starts, winters on, but he keeps an eye out. Płotka does too, he knows.

Soon enough after the Trial, when Lambert gained back his strength plus the enhancements, the boy was then strong enough to start regularly wearing Mal draped over the both of his shoulders like a thick, outsized fur collar.

From the appearance of it, it'd be easy to take as laziness on the daemon's part. It'd also be a foolish assumption, given the way Lambert moved often required a constant and full-body counterbalance to remain so firmly seated when their makeshift mount went from dashing about to stopping on a pin to wheel himself around while Mal used raw strength and momentum to be launched off of him claws-out like a bolt just sling-loaded.

The next year, Geralt was called in with Varin, with Vesemir presiding, about Mal's relative size. It was one of the rare times when Geralt and Płotka being summoned by the instructors to give input was actually about _Geralt's_ opinion on the matter, given he'd taken it on to himself to read up on wolverines.

Varin dismissed it. "Bunk, all of it," he said. "It's a pre-conjunction species like any other, Geralt. You should know from your work to doubt _tall tales_ of incredible feats."

"That's why I kept to the reputable first-hand accounts," Geralt said evenly. Płotka, keeping her silence for once, pressed her shoulder against his thigh, staring coolly at Varin.

Varin also scoffed at thirty pounds full-grown. Small wonder, when Idelya clocked in at fourteen stone. "If that's the final size, the boy'll be as scrawny as he is now."

"If the daemon's settled size portended the size of the boy, Eskel would be a good two feet taller than the rest of us," Vesemir pointed out.

Lambert had already clearly hit a growth spurt in that startling way that their charges do when one only sees them every winter, shot up like a weed and leaving Geralt wondering where the rest of the boy had come from. Mal, however, looked on track to stay at most thirty pounds as their kin.

Varin finally stopped picking at it the first time the pair finally worked out how to hoist Mal off Lambert's back mid-motion like a counterweight trebuchet with enough accuracy and ferocity they'd cracked the thick oak post of one of the training dummies clear in half.

* * *

"Malady if I am to be a girl, but Malad if I am to be a boy."

"And which one are you?" Geralt asked.

" _Wouldn't you like to know_ ," Mal trilled at him mockingly.

* * *

The next year Mal had picked up a rider, quite literally. It's a little capuchin monkey that calls herself Lumière, always doffing an imagined cap when she does. She's taken to riding Mal as a steed, in those times when Mal isn't riding on Lambert, and Geralt makes the mistake of mentioning how she'd just need a lance to complete the image, to the delight of the pair and the regret of everyone else.

* * *

"It never was a nickname. It's an acronym. M. A. L."

"An acronym for what?"

"Won't tell you that, either."

* * *

Geralt hadn't been called in to defend Lumière's settling, but he knows Varin doesn't think much of the tiny beast, or the wisecracking boy she belongs to who's apparently taken up like a house on fire with Lambert, two boys with too-small daemons and too much to say against the world.

* * *

"Trebmal," Mal told him, and then rolled their head back disdainfully and explained "It's Lambert backwards, _obviously_. _Really_ , Geralt. You're going to need to start being more clever."

"I'll try," Geralt promised in a dry tone.

* * *

Varin's discontent lasts until Lumière scampers in one day to the courtyard wearing a bandolier, scrapped together from cast-off leather crafting. Even Varin has to admit the benefit of having another pair of small, clever fingers.

* * *

"Uhhhh. Meatball. What," Mal snapped, "it's a contraction. They can't all be brilliant off my paw, Geralt. I _do_ have an entire life beyond this."

* * *

After the Trial of the Medallion, there's only Mal and Lambert.

Geralt knew better than to ask about Lumière, but he'd tried to ask, just one last time. Mal had spat "That fucking animal," before just snarling at him wordlessly.

There was no more need to check at night, after that. Lambert and Mal both were a witcher, now.

And then there was never a need for it again, not for any boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the [lumières](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumi%C3%A8res), the french word for "light", were a movement of the enlightenment. voltaire was one of their rank.
> 
> one more chapter after this!


	8. Last

"So the spell fell through. So _what_ ," Mal snarls, as the last of the invisibility flickers out like the flare and they're left half a mile out of Kaer Morhen, faced with the regrouping force of the Wild Hunt. "They're not so tough."

"Larger than you," Lambert says.

"Larger than me means but _more throat to grab_ ," Mal returns.

Lambert laughs, loud and free. "Ain't that the truth!"

"Let's kick their asses!!" Mal shrieks.

"We might not get out of this alive," Geralt says, hefting the hilt in his hand as the armored figures begin to materialize out of the haze, Płotka pacing behind him. "Wanna tell me what Mal's short for, after all?"

" _Short_ for?" Lambert asks right back. "The fuck're you talking about? It's always just been Mal."

Maybe it's the sound of Mal's cackling hoots of triumph that will give them the pre-emptive push to victory.

"Decades _upon decades!!_ " Mal screeches, with the same ardent joy they always take of the fall of a competitor, ever since they were just a child. "And never once were the either of you _ever_ _clever enough!!"_

"Geralt, we can't die here," Płotka says, and for the first time in a long time there's a spark to her eye that isn't just grim determination but something that burns hotter. "We-- we can't let them just get _away_ with that. Geralt, we _can't_."

Geralt nods once, eyes focused on the approaching enemy. "Aye, my heart. And we won't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that wraps it up! i didn't get the place to put it in, but ciri's daemon is a majestic white lion named cereus after the [super special night-blooming flower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-blooming_cereus), because she _is_ a most special and magical princess.
> 
> idk if i'll ever get to the full daemon profiles-- my passion for fanfiction's been waning a bit-- but i really did want to wrap this up. thank you to all my readers, commenters, and a special thanks to the frankly _flattering_ number of subscribers, which hovered at about half the kudos count the entire story. knowing all of you really wanted to see this through to the end saw me through!

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked my fic, please remember to leave kudos! 
> 
> (｡òᴗ-)7✧ i like seeing who liked my stuff.


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